Chapter 949

Everything has a warning sign.

As an earthquake approaches, the ground rumbles and countless birds take flight all at once. Before a typhoon strikes, featherlike clouds fill the sky.

If even natural disasters—calamities that might as well be divine punishment—give warning, what more need be said of something done by human hands?

Just a few days ago, some people had sensed ominous signs coming from the grasslands.

They were unmistakable.

The nomads. No—the entire grasslands are on the move.

In a vast hall veiled in dimness, an imposing man silently studied the map before him.

It was as large as three or four grown men laid together and crowded with the terrain and place names of the entire continent. Yet his gaze was fixed on one place alone.

Shanxi.

The land where he had been born and raised. The land his ancestors had protected.

A little over three hundred years ago, near the end of the war that had drenched the world in blood, a man had arrived here.

His family name was Jin; his given name, Muryang.

He had been an unwelcome outsider. But in Taiyuan, he laid a foundation stone and raised his banner, and the Jin Family of Taiyuan began.

Even he couldn’t have known our family would endure for so long.

A little over three hundred years.

An almost unimaginable span of time.

Flowers beautiful enough to draw gasps and towering trees grand enough to awe all who saw them had fallen to the passing winters and the years.

But the weeds on the frontier—the Jin Family of Taiyuan—still protected this land.

Blooming in profusion, then broken, shattered, and rising again.

“Rise and fall. Flourishing and decline.”

Jin Wikyung murmured the words, then slowly continued.

“Our family rose long ago, and we only narrowly escaped ruin. So I thought surely all that remained was for us to flourish…”

He smiled bitterly.

“I had that badly wrong. Don’t you think?”

It wasn’t a lament to no one, nor was he talking to himself.

Wipeng stood at his post, solid as an iron tower and still as a lake. He spoke.

“Looking at you now, my lord, I’m reminded of the past.”

“The past?”

“It wasn’t so long ago. Only two years.”

“The Mount Heng Sword Sect…”

“That’s right. You looked like this then, too.”

Wipeng’s voice was as cold as the epithet Ghost Sword suggested.

“The fight hasn’t even begun. Are you thinking of laying down your sword before you’ve drawn it?”

“Is that how it looks?”

“To me, yes.”

At his closest retainer’s firm answer, Jin Wikyung bit his lip.

He was ashamed that he couldn’t deny it at once. And the reality that kept him from making a decision even in a moment of stubborn defiance was bleak.

“I’m…the Lesser Family Head of our family. Countless lives depend on a few words or some small action of mine.”

Not only those of the Jin Family of Taiyuan.

All of Shanxi Murim moved according to Jin Wikyung’s will. The Jin Family of Taiyuan was unquestionably the foremost power in Shanxi Province, and he was, for all intents and purposes, its Family Head.

Even now, a wave of tens of thousands of men and horses was bearing down on their land.

“I’ve already sent a letter through the Shanxi Provincial Office ordering the evacuation of the people around Datong and Saneum. We have to prevent as many needless casualties as we can.”

Datong and Saneum were the districts closest to the grasslands. They would be the first places trampled when the grassland army crossed the border.

“The Mount Heng Sword Sect must withdraw as well. There’s still time. It’s the only way to save the sect from destruction.”

“Do you think Sect Leader Lee will agree?”

“It isn’t a proposal. It’s an order.”

Jin Wikyung’s voice was subdued.

“She has no other choice. By now, she must have accepted that.”

Over the past two years, the Mount Heng Sword Sect had grown remarkably under the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s banner.

Lee Seowol, its new Sect Leader, had proven far more capable than anyone had expected of a woman in that position.

Her father, the former Sect Leader Lee Cheonbaek—the Blood Wolf Sword—had built the Mount Heng Sword Sect through fear and force. With her intelligence and leadership, she had rebuilt it when it stood on the brink of collapse.

The whole world had taken notice.

But no matter how much the sect had grown, it could not withstand the crisis now on its doorstep.

“Thirty thousand.”

Jin Wikyung met Wipeng’s eyes.

“By the time they reach Shanxi Province, their numbers will have swelled to thirty thousand.”

The past few days had passed with merciless speed.

One day, urgent word had arrived that nomads scattered across the grasslands were gathering. Then several Escort Bureaus and merchant houses along the grassland trade routes had disappeared.

Their fate was obvious. So were the culprits.

“Their aim is clear. So is who’s behind them.”

Jin Wikyung knew Temur and Chinggen well. Support from the Jin Family of Taiyuan had been one of the chief reasons the two men had risen so quickly to power on the grasslands.

“Temur is strong, but utterly simple. Chinggen is calculating and cautious, but his ambitions are limited. Neither would ever attempt something like this. They don’t have the strength for it, either.”

The age when grassland nomads had thundered across the continent with bows and lances was long gone.

The empire they had built had vanished without a trace. Driven onto vast but desolate plains, the nomads had feuded among themselves and dwindled.

“Their strength has been proven. But it still isn’t enough to threaten the Central Plains.”

Temur and Chinggen, now called khans, were still just two among the many Great Chieftains of the grasslands.

And the Central Plains?

Every province had thousands—sometimes more than ten thousand—soldiers of the Great Nation, along with powerful Murim sects.

The divided grasslands. The united Central Plains.

The gulf between them was too deep and wide.

The nomads would never again follow their ancestors’ path to rule the world.

Not unless another great power intervened.

“It isn’t thirty thousand nomads I’m afraid of.”

Jin Wikyung glared at the enormous map, as though waiting for something hidden among its dense lines and characters to spring out.

“Dark Heaven. I’m afraid of the strength they haven’t shown us yet.”

For the past two years, the Jin Family of Taiyuan had gone from strength to strength.

But through all the celebrations and cheers, Jin Wikyung had suffered a terrible nightmare every night.

A nightmare filled with the dead.

“Kill them!”

“Don’t retreat a single step!”

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Eight Spring Gorge.

Every night, Jin Wikyung wandered that bloody gorge, where enemies, allies, and traitors had charged at one another like beasts.

“Lesser Family Head, are you all right—? Cough!”

He watched a family retainer who had always greeted him with a smile collapse in a spray of blood.

“P-Please, spare me. I beg you. I beg you.”

He passed a dying Mount Heng Sword Sect martial artist, eyes wide open, on his way to face another enemy.

“Do you know what you—you, the Jin Family of Taiyuan—did to us?!”

He faced the traitors who had finally drawn the blades they had kept hidden for decades.

He crossed swords with them without pause until, at last, he brought them down and stood before one man.

“Look around you. What do you think as you watch them die so horribly?”

A beard stained red with blood.

A dry gaze. A dry voice.

The Head Elder, who had surely died long ago, spoke to his own blood kin, his breath cold.

“If you had been a little more careful. A little wiser…could you have prevented a tragedy like this?”

Jin Wikyung had no memory of those words.

Of course he didn’t.

They were questions he asked himself.

He knew the Head Elder in his nightmare—and every word the man spoke—came from within him.

Even knowing that, he dreamed it again and again.

Even now.

“My lord.”

Wipeng’s voice suddenly reached him. Jin Wikyung blinked slowly, like a man waking from sleep, and realized his body was damp with cold sweat.

“…Damn it. Look at the state of me.”

Jin Wikyung let out a short curse, then gave a bitter chuckle.

It was ridiculous. He was trembling like a drenched rat.

And the fate of Shanxi Murim—no, of all Shanxi Province—rested in the hands of this pathetic man, who could barely breathe under the pressure closing in from every direction.

His one small comfort was that someone who had stood beside him for so long was still there.

“May I say something, my lord?”

Wipeng’s voice broke the brief silence. He continued without waiting for an answer.

“The enemy is strong. If Dark Heaven’s hidden forces join thirty thousand nomads…you may be right. What happens then may be beyond undoing.”

“Even with the government’s help, we can’t be sure we’d win. Without reinforcements, we couldn’t hold them off with every force Shanxi Province can muster.”

Jin Wikyung added bitterly, “Even if we’re lucky enough to get reinforcements in time, there won’t be nearly enough. Of course there won’t. In their place, I couldn’t leave my family unprotected either.”

A feint to the east, a strike in the west.

The vast grasslands bordered not only Shanxi Province, but Liaoning, Hebei, and Shaanxi as well. The moment the army marching south toward Shanxi turned its horses elsewhere, the sects and families that had sent reinforcements would become its new targets.

And while Dark Heaven possessed the strange dark art known as the Moving Formation, no one could easily leave their sect or family undefended.

They had things to protect, too.

“I intend to abandon Shanxi and head for Henan. As long as our people survive, our family won’t disappear.”

This was neither the best choice nor the second-best.

It was the lesser evil, chosen to avert the worst.

Wipeng understood Jin Wikyung’s desire to prevent so many deaths.

“If that is your command, my lord, I will obey.”

“Wipeng, you…”

“But my lord, do you remember?”

Wipeng spoke calmly.

“Two years ago, someone said that once you start retreating, you’ll keep backing away until you trip over a rock and fall.”

“…!”

“I know how strong the enemy is. And I know why you’ve made this decision. But…”

Wipeng drew a deep breath and clasped his hands in salute to the lord he trusted and followed.

“Our Jin Family of Taiyuan has grown stronger. No—Shanxi Murim has grown stronger.”

He turned without hesitation and opened the tightly shut door.

Swish.

Jin Wikyung saw them then.

Beyond the slowly opening door, countless people waited, armed and ready.

Familiar faces stood at their head.

“Lee Seowol of the Mount Heng Sword Sect. I’ve come to fight the foreign enemy.”

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Lee Seowol stood in martial attire. Behind her, three hundred Mount Heng Sword Sect martial artists drew their weapons and drove them deep into the ground.

“Sect Leader Lee. What is all this…?”

Jin Wikyung couldn’t finish.

He had spotted the dozens of Sect Leaders and Family Heads who had sworn allegiance beneath the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s banner two years ago. Each stood armed, eyes cold.

And among them was someone who had just appeared.

“What’s got you so worried?”

The young man’s voice was rough and awkward, as if he’d forgotten how to speak for a long time.

He smiled at Jin Wikyung, his hollow cheeks standing out.

“Hyung.¹”

“…!”

His younger brother had finally emerged into the world after a long seclusion. At the sight of him, Jin Wikyung closed his eyes, unable to contain the emotion rising within him.

And in the instant of darkness, he recalled the voice of his youngest brother, who wasn’t there, speaking through Wipeng just moments ago.

Once you start retreating, you’ll keep backing away until you trip over a rock and fall.

He couldn’t be sure which choice was right or wrong.

But the road ahead was decided.

Step.

He walked toward the people waiting for the Lesser Family Head of the Jin Family of Taiyuan.

Toward the dark future from which the smell of blood was already drifting.